How your identity gets swiped even if you’re careful– A site called SSNDOB has been selling names, social security numbers, birthdates, and more culled from these sites via a botnet attack last spring. According to Brian Krebs, you could buy a credit report from the site on anyone for just $15. A background check would run you $12; a drivers license record $4, and assorted other bits of highly personal info costs 50 cents to $1.50 per.

Four tips to speed up your Android tablet – I’ve seen it before with a number of devices; Android tablets starting to bog down to the point of not being responsive at all. What do you do? Is it time to reset that tablet to factory defaults? Probably not. Instead of scrapping the current state of your tablet, try these four quick tips to regain control of your wayward Android tablet.

Creative apps to keep your kids busy on a rainy day – Rainy days are the worst when you’re a kid. You can’t play outside, everything inside is boring, and adults are all cranky because of the weather. But kids these days are a luckier bunch—there’s no end to the amount of entertainment available at their fingertips. But how about some options to really get their creative juices flowing? Tablet apps can inspire all kinds of creativity, from drawing to cooking to music. Here are nine fantastic choices to try the next time the weather turns terrible.

GOP Threatens Net Neutrality Over ‘Obamacare,’ Debt Concessions – By involving the tech community in the healthcare and debt war, Congress has gone too far. Amidst heated debate over the Affordable Health Care Act, commonly known as “Obamacare,” and in exchange for short-term funding to avoid a possible government shutdown, House Republicans have put together a proposal of demands, one of which includes a block on net neutrality.

Bitcoins for sex: Escort agency becomes first to accept payment in Bitcoin – Booking time with a Passion VIP escort is simple enough. You call the company, make an appointment with the receptionist, and transfer your Bitcoins. Once the payment has been accepted, you’ll receive a call back from Passion VIP, confirming the appointment. Then, the worry of payment will no longer harsh your vibe, and you won’t have to awkwardly tell your escort that “the money’s on a flash drive on the dresser on your way out.”

Security:

Known, unpatched flaws draw most attacks, Kaspersky says – Cybercriminals still make extensive use of known vulnerabilities, even as zero-day attacks continue to rise. In joint research carried out by Kaspersky Lab and Outpost24, unpatched loopholes continue to be a popular means of carrying out attacks.

Become a hacker. Coding experience not needed– I recently watched a YouTube video in which Bogdan Botezatu, senior e-threat analyst for BitDefender, demonstrated the ease with which someone can infect an Android app. What made the process a snap was a free tool called AndroRAT, which anyone can find with a simple web search. The version of AndroRAT Botezatu used required no coding. With just a few clicks by the user, the software decompiled the APK of an app downloaded from Google Play, inserted the malicious code and then repackaged everything. The tool also configured the app with the IP address needed to communicate with a C&C server.

Iran accused of hacking into U.S. Navy computers – The U.S. doesn’t believe important data was stolen, but the attacks showed a new level of Iranian hacking power, including the ability to access military data, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal. Either agents working directly for the Iranian government or an outside group with Iran’s approval allegedly carried out the attacks.

Java called favorite target for hack attacks this year – Analysis of attacks shows the top five exploited vulnerabilities accounting for 95 percent of all attacks, with the U.S. the geographic location most targeted. F-Secure estimates 78 out of every 1000 users in the U.S. saw a detection identifying an exploit of a specific vulnerability in the last six months. Germany also saw a fairly high number of attacks with about 60 out of 1000 users hit within the same time frame.

Company News:

Google Must Face Wiretapping Charges – Google lost a request to dismiss a class-action case over Gmail scanning. A California judge this week rejected Google’s request to dismiss a class-action case that accuses the search giant of violating federal and state wiretap laws via a program in Gmail that scans emails to serve up targeted ads.

France Moves to Impose Sanctions Against Google Over Privacy Policy – French officials today moved to impose sanctions against Google for failing to alter its privacy policy. At issue is an update to Google’s privacy policy that went into effect on March 1, 2012. The revamp consolidated 70 or so privacy policies across Google’s products down to one. But with this change, Google also switched to one profile for users across all services rather than separate logins for offerings like YouTube, Search, and Blogger.

Apple most valuable brand of 2013, leaves Coca-Cola in the dust – Apple has something new to boast about as it grabs a coveted top spot in the most valuable brands of 2013. Following closely is search giant and Android maker Google at second. The two technology companies have displaced former king Coca-Cola for the first time in the list’s history, possibly signifying a shift in market perception and brand valuation.

Games and Entertainment:

Explore 10 incredible open-world games – In an open-world game, you have almost no restrictions on where you can go within the confines of the game, and very few rules governing what you can do within it. Here are 10 other open-world games that you can explore for weeks and years to come, starting with the dragon-infested fantasy land of Tamriel.

Grand Theft Auto Online in-game payments for cash: Rockstar confirms – As Microsoft gears up for a rockstar-like world tour of its latest flagship gaming product Xbox One, Rockstar North has dropped a bombshell that has its doggedly loyal fan base foaming at the mouth. In a blog post last week, the game development giant confirmed that its highly anticipated blockbuster Grand Theft Auto Online will indeed allow for real micro-payments in exchange for in-game cash.

What Games Are: Steam’s Big Bet – With new consoles and microconsoles starting to pop into existence, this week Valve finally revealed its answer: SteamOS. Steam Machines. Steam Controllers. Boom. Its ambitions are not to launch a console but a whole solution for home gaming entertainment. In a sense it has to.

Shadow Warrior – Shadow Warrior is a surprisingly successful reboot of a problematic ’90s shooter that captures the essence of an over-the-top ’80s action movie.

Off Topic (Sort of):

10 hilarious video game glitch GIFs – Game designers can only do so much to make sure everything works as it is supposed to, so when you have thousands (or millions) of gamers putting in hour after hour with a game, they’re sure to encounter some bugs that made it past testing. A lot of them are pretty funny too. Let’s check out 10 of the best in GIF form.

When Baby Hits The Bottle, So Does Daddy – Drinking with small children in the house isn’t taboo; it’s compulsory. “Happy hour starts at 7 pm. We have taken to the bottle. With a restorative slug of alcohol the world, for a moment, makes sense. We can laugh at our parental inadequacies, our daughters’ smiles. With alcohol, sex becomes a distant possibility. Coffee gets us through the day; alcohol gives us the fortitude to do it again”

Here’s something neat: Being messy has its benefits – Are you born neat? Perhaps it’s an innate cognitive thing. You think hierarchically, therefore order in your outside environment (as an extension of the one inside your head) is important. Or is it a matter of how you were brought up? Does it emerge based on the demand of one’s role or job? I, for instance, have developed a stress-response tidiness tic. My family always knows I’m anxious when they see me meticulously scrubbing the kitchen counter. (suggested by Aseem S.)

100 percent effective – You can avoid being tracked on the Internet after all. One man’s creative solution. (recommended by Michael F.)

Dutch police recruit rat detectives to sniff out crime – Derrick, Thomson and Thompson, Magnum, and Poirot are the newest recruits at a Dutch police department. These Rotterdam rats have been trained to keep the streets clean and are expected to save the police both time and money. Detective Derrick and his rat partners cost just £8 each and are capable of being trained to identify an impressive range of odors—including drugs and explosives—within ten to 15 days. In contrast, a police dog costs thousands of pounds and requires a minimum training period of eight months.

Incredible comparison chart lists almost every sci-fi starship in one image – DeviantArt user Dirk Loechel has assembled a very useful chart showing the relative sizes of almost every spacecraft in major science fiction universes through 2013. It’s massive and incredibly cool. The JPEG is 3985 x 4158 pixels, so you’re only going to see a little bit of it at a time as you pan around to check out all the ships (each pixel amounts to 10 meters). Each ship on the chart is labeled with the name, sci-fi franchise it appears in, and total length indicated by available sources.

“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.”

– Benjamin Disraeli

Today’s Free Downloads:

IObit Unlocker 1.1 – Often when we try to delete a file or folder in Windows, we see annoying messages like “Cannot delete file: Access is denied;” or “Cannot delete folder: It is being used by another person or program” or “There has been a sharing violation;” or “The source or destination file may be in use;” or “The file is in use by another program or user;” or “Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use;” or “Cannot read from the source file or disk.” This is majorly because the file or folder is being used by another program or user. IObit Unlocker is an ideal tool for such conditions. It releases the file or folder from being occupied by programs and allows you to quickly remove or modify the file or folder.

Wise PC 1stAid – Wise PC 1stAid is an intelligent software which has assembled most common PC problems and helps you fix them automatically through an intelligent process. It’s a rich PC solutions library and intelligent First-Aid help for you to fix PC problems.

Start Menu 8 1.3.0 – StartMenu8 is specially designed for Window 8. It offers a perfect solution for users who work with Windows Start Menu all the time and are not accustomed to the new Metro start screen in Windows 8. This smart tool brings back both the start button and Windows Start Menu, and offers the option to skip Metro start page, allowing users who only work on desktop to boot to Windows 8 desktop directly. It’s the best start menu replacement for Windows8.

The NSA Refuses To Deny That It Collected The Location Data Of US Phone Calls – This is a bit worse than you think. The NSA already tracks the time and human participation of U.S. phone calls, so why is location an issue? Because if the NSA tracks the location of U.S. cell phone calls, it has roving GPS units strapped to every citizen that could be used to map where each of us is at any given moment.

Rights groups plan anti-NSA surveillance rally in D.C. – About 100 public advocacy and other groups plan to stage what they hope will be a big rally in Washington D.C. to protest the the controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs disclosed by document-leaker Edward Snowden in June. The “Rally Against Mass Surveillance” is scheduled for the weekend of October 26, the 12th anniversary of the signing U.S Patriot Act by former president George W. Bush.

US government given December deadline to unseal more NSA documents – A federal judge has ruled that the US government must unseal more documents related to the NSA spying program by December 20. The news comes from an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) press release after the organization found some recent success in its long-running Jewel v. NSA lawsuit. (The EFF initially filed suit in 2008 in response to Bush administration revelations about the existence of NSA spying programs.)

Windows 8 after a year: 21 hardware hits and misses – Over the past year, I’ve used Windows 8 (and Windows 8.1) on at least 20 different PCs in a broad range of form factors, ranging from a Vista-era desktop to an amazingly light Haswell-powered Ultrabook with a Gorilla Glass cover. Here’s a quick tour of these devices, along with my lessons learned from each one.

8 Reasons Valve’s Steam Machines Conquer the Living Room and 5 They Don’t– If you’re eyeballing Valve’s SteamOS and Steam Machines announcements as some kind of weird, last ditch attempt to save PC gaming — a “can’t-beat-em-so-join-em” tactical capitulation to consoles — you need to think again, and more carefully. This isn’t Valve sort-of-kind-of picking PC gaming up off the desktop and walking it over to your comfy plush chair and big screen TV. This is Valve spooling up a tactical nuke and painting a target on Microsoft’s, Sony’s and Nintendo’s backs.

Learn to build a PC in under two minutes – Building a computer is a great way to get a custom configuration, save some money and have fun. In this how-to video, we’ll show you how to build one in less than two minutes.

Don’t uninstall Ubuntu, just change the interface – If you haven’t installed Ubuntu on something in a little while, you may be in for a bit of a surprise when you see the Unity interface. Canonical has done quite a bit to make things user friendly, but some adventurous Linux fans may be interested in exploring new options. If that’s the case know this: there’s no need to uninstall Ubuntu, you can change the environment to suit your needs.

Lawsuit alleging Gmail ads are “wiretapping” gets judge’s OK – Even an e-mail sender who read the company’s privacy policies “would not have necessarily understood that her e-mails were being intercepted to create user profiles or to provide targeted advertisements,” stated the judge. The plaintiffs in this case haven’t consented implicitly or explicitly to have their e-mails scanned, and so the lawsuit can move forward, she ruled.

Bug alert: Inserting images in Gmail messages could get you banned – Beware Gmail users: Inserting images into the body of an email message can get you temporarily banned from your account. Google has acknowledged the problem but hasn’t been able to stamp it out. To reduce the risk of tripping over this issue, Google recommends that people use “a browser other than Firefox” when composing an email with images in its message body.

Security:

For hire: Elite “cyber mercenaries” adept at infecting Windows and Macs – Researchers from Russia-based Kaspersky Lab have uncovered a gang of hackers for hire who specialize in surgical strikes that quickly infiltrate suppliers to Western companies, steal highly sensitive data, and then vanish. Icefog, as the group of “cyber mercenaries” has been dubbed, is made up of six to 10 members who are able to infect both Windows and Mac computers with advanced malware that’s extremely hard to detect, Kaspersky researchers revealed in a report published Wednesday.

Malicious browser extensions pose a serious threat and defenses are lacking – The number of malicious browser extensions has significantly increased in the past year but many security products fail to offer adequate protection against them, while others are simply not designed to do so, according to a security researcher. Attackers have already used such extensions to perform click fraud by inserting rogue advertisements into websites or by hijacking search queries, but research has shown that this type of malware has the potential to cause much more damage.

Facebook wins $3M injunction against spammer – Nearly five years after the fact, Facebook has been awarded $3 million in damages in its case against social-network spammer Power Ventures and its CEO, Steve Vachani. The order was issued Wednesday by Judge Lucy H. Koh of the United States District Court, San Jose Division. Power Ventures and its CEO were both found liable under the Can-Spam Act for sending 60,627 spam e-mail messages to Facebook members. Koh also granted Facebook permanent injunctive relief.

Company News:

PayPal launches small-business loan program – PayPal won’t actually lend the money—its initial banking partner is WebBank. But borrowers aren’t saddled with fixed monthly payments or late fees: Rather, they repay the loan and a pre-set loan fee out of sales revenues processed by PayPal. The cost of the loan depends on the amount borrowed (generally, up to 8 percent of total annual sales processed by PayPal in the last year), the percentage of sales receipts dedicated to paying the loan (between 10 percent and 30 percent), and the merchant’s PayPal track record.

Apple’s German patent suit shut down by a 2007 video of Steve Jobs – Big problem: Jobs showed off iPhone features 5 months before patent filing date. This is the same 2007 demo in which Jobs bragged of the iPhone’s multitouch features: “And boy, have we patented it!” While that may be true in the US, it was apparently less true abroad.

Facebook Starts Up Its Mobile Ad Network Again, Focuses On Improved Targeting – After a nine-month pause, Facebook is taking its mobile ad network out for another spin. “We’re running a second test to show Facebook ads off Facebook in mobile ads and on mobile sites. Our goal is to improve the relevancy of the ads people see. Since this is a test, we don’t have additional details to share,” a Facebook representative told TechCrunch.

Intel reportedly in talks with Samsung and Amazon for Web TV backing – In February, Intel announced plans for a Web TV service, something that would be akin to Hulu and Netflix, but that would also offer live TV broadcasts. The given timeline for the service was later in 2013, a time that is quickly nearing and has prompted the company to seek backers for the service. If such backers willing to distribute and fund Web TV aren’t found, the project may fizzle away, says sources.

Evernote Announces A Market For Physical Products, Including Post-Its … And Socks? – It’s entering a partnership with 3M and its Post-it note brand to develop a special line of notepads and a camera to take notes, record them, and then seamlessly transfer them into Evernote’s platform. That news was actually leaked last night, but today Evernote went one step further, announcing that these products and more will now be sold through a special online shop, called Evernote Market. (The company says the market will also be available in its desktop and mobile apps.)

CloudPassage Extends Cloud Infrastructure Security to Large Enterprises – Halo Enterprise extends CloudPassage’s patented Halo cloud security platform to large enterprises with complex security and compliance requirements. Halo currently protects more than 400 production cloud deployments and automates security for more than 10,000 new cloud instances monthly.

ManageEngine Launches OpManager Large Enterprise Edition – ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, today announced the general availability of the Large Enterprise Edition of OpManager, the network and data center infrastructure management software. The new edition combines enterprise-grade scalability, speed, agility and affordability to offer a compelling alternative for companies seeking to replace their legacy network management tools from HP, IBM, CA and Microsoft.

Ford CEO reportedly top pick to replace Ballmer as Microsoft chief – Ford CEO Alan Mulally has taken pole position among potential candidates for the Microsoft CEO job, sources claim, despite the exec’s ongoing denials that he has ambitions to replace Steve Ballmer. Mulally’s name was pushed by Microsoft’s board as a possibility, it was reported earlier this month, but Nokia’s Stephen Elop was believed to be the frontrunner as he returned to the firm following the smartphone division acquisition. Now, AllThingsD reports, favor has returned to focus on Mulally.

The Heist: How Grand Theft Auto V gets away with murder – The week of Grand Theft Auto V’s launch could have been a controversy cash-in for the publicity lovers at Rockstar Games. The game’s checklist of features reads like Tipper Gore’s personal hell: savage murders, psychotic heroes, strip clubs, an interactive torture sequence, and enough swears and offensive terms to do George Carlin proud.

Grand Theft Auto Online cash cards will cost between $3 and $20 – Rockstar has now confirmed that purchasing in-game cash with real money is a feature of Grand Theft Auto Online. The developer has reassured gamers that the game has been balanced so as never to require you to purchase GTA$, but the option is there for “instant gratification” and to get you where you want to be quicker.

Apple TV Gets Live MLS Games And Disney Junior Kids Content Via New Channels – Apple continues to roll out its staged partner additions, with two new channels appearing on the streaming media player today. The Major League Soccer channel brings soccer (or “football,” depending on how European you are) and the Disney Junior channel adds a third outlet for that media giant’s content to invade your Apple TV.

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn impressions: Proud to be an MMORPG – Here’s the reason Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (FFXIV) is good: it’s bad. That is, it’s bad at following the conventional wisdom that says MMORPGs are bad when they’re too much like work, when they’re harder to play alone, and most of all, when they’re not accessible enough. The creators of FFXIV know that these are actually the trends making the genre bad, and by ignoring them, the game manages to be good.

This is where Ctrl+Alt+Del came from – Bill Gates regrets it, Windows users generally hate it, and its become computing shorthand for hitting reset on a bad idea, but Ctrl+Alt+Del wasn’t always a bad idea. The much-maligned key combo came in for some criticism by the former Microsoft CEO at an interview this week, with Gates questioning “Who’s idea was that?” and blaming IBM for not replacing it with a single hardware button.

Enterprises like making Android apps; losing interest in Windows – Enterprises are increasingly interested in developing apps for Android-based smartphones and tablets, showing how Google’s OS is becoming more accepted, according to a poll. At the same time fewer are willing to spend resources on Microsoft’s OSes. Only 26% of enterprise staff are very interested in developing mobile apps for Microsoft OSes, survey finds.

Attention-operated vehicle uses EPOC headset to detect distraction, shut down car – Distracted driving, whether due to cell phone usage or other reasons, is a major cause of car crashes and the related fallout both in the U.S. and abroad, something that has prompted the NHTSA to propose an in-car system to automatically block cell phones. The Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia, more commonly called RAW WA, has come up with a more novel solution involving a so called attention-operated car.

Something to think about:

“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.”

– Erica Jong

Today’s Free Downloads:

Apache OpenOffice.org For Windows 4.01 – OpenOffice.org is a free, Open Source alternative to MS Office with a Word compatible word processor, a complete Excel compatible spread sheet program and a Power Point like presentation software and drawing program and also allows to save to PDF file.

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

NSA: Surveillance court says no upper limit on phone records collection – A U.S. surveillance court has given the National Security Agency no limit on the number of U.S. telephone records it collects in the name of fighting terrorism, the NSA director said Thursday. The NSA intends to collect all U.S. telephone records and put them in a searchable “lock box” in the interest of national security, General Keith Alexander, the NSA’s director, told U.S. senators.

U.S. lawmakers move to curb NSA collection of phone and other records – Bipartisan bill aims to make bulk collection of telephone records illegal – A bipartisan group of four U.S. lawmakers has introduced legislation that will prohibit bulk collection of phone records of Americans. Called the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act, the bill introduced by Democratic Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Richard Blumenthal, and Republican Senator Rand Paul will also provide for the creation of a “constitutional advocate” to argue against the government in significant cases before the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It will also set up a process for making significant FISC decisions public.

Cybercom Activates National Mission Force Headquarters – U.S. Cyber Command has activated the headquarters for its Cyber National Mission Force, the one of its three forces that would react to a cyber attack on the nation, Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander, Cybercom’s commander, said at the National Press Club today. Speaking at the 4th Annual Cybersecurity Summit, the general, who is also director of the National Security Agency, said Cybercom teams are now fully operational and working side by side with NSA to defend the nation. “We will ensure that we have the best force anywhere in the world,” Alexander said. (suggested by Aseem S.)

Shutting Down The US Government Likely Won’t Slow The NSA’s Surveillance Activities – Shutting down the U.S. government wouldn’t lead to the NSA halting its controversial, and broad surveillance efforts. Leaked documents by Edward Snowden recently detailed the financial cost of the NSA and other intelligence efforts. The CIA is the most expensive chunk of the U.S. “black budget,” costing $14.7 billion. The NSA costs $10.8 billion.

Pew: 15% Of Americans Don’t Have Internet. 5% Think It’s Irrelevant – Five percent of Americans have resisted the siren song of cat listicles and hashtags. Specifically, they think the Internet is “irrelevant,” to use words of Pew, which just released a report on the demographic of Americans without Internet. In total, 15% of Americans don’t go online for a variety of reasons. By far the largest reason is that it’s a “waste of time”.

Beware of Yelp: 20% of reviews are fake – Back in 2006, the number of fake reviews spread across the service only made up about 5% of the total user reviews. Now, just seven years later, that number has shot up to 20%. One out of every five Yelp reviews are fake. The report comes out of Harvard Business School, and suggests that if you heavily rely on Yelp’s user reviews to determine the quality of an establishment, you should scale back that reliance.

Don’t Like DASH? Then YouTube Center is For You – Not too long ago, YouTube implemented a new way of streaming its videos. In the old days you would begin watching a YouTube stream and the buffer would fill up and keep streaming until it was full. Now, what happens is that you watch the video with a brief amount of buffer preceding what you are watching. That’s a great improvement over the older standards from the provider’s viewpoint, but it it isn’t worth a darn for the person who wants to watch in a variated way. Some people actually like to jump around when they watch a video and DASH doesn’t allow for that anymore.

Benchmarks don’t lie: SSD upgrades deliver huge performance gains – I’ve upgraded dozens of systems with solid-state drives. In every case I’ve gotten a “W” reaction, as in “Wow!” “Whoa!” and “No way!” (not to mention “Kewl!”). Given a relatively modern CPU, an SSD delivers more satisfaction than any upgrade I know. Don’t take my word for it, however: Believe the numbers.

Chrome users oppose change to Google’s new tab page – Google yesterday started rolling out a redesigned new tab page for Chrome, making good on a promise from last month when it offered the revamp to users running rougher-edged versions of its browser. Most users gave the new look a failing grade. “Fail, fail, fail,” said Philip Wright, one of those who commented on the announcement. Google characterized the addition as a way to speed up search. (Stop fixing things that ain’t broke! Massive FAIL!)

Google Chrome update: How to access apps and recently closed tabs – Just last month I pointed out three handy (but often-overlooked) Google Chrome features, one of which was how to access tabs you’ve recently closed. Today, Google rolled out a Chrome update that not only relocates that useful option, but also simplifies the browser’s new-tab interface.

Microsoft cuts Xbox 360 price by $50 for a limited time – For a limited time you can pick up a brand new Xbox 360 with $50 slashed off the usual price and/or $50 of Xbox Live credit included in the purchase. The participating retailers include Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, NFM, Target, and Walmart, but the offer varies depending on which of those you decide to purchase from.

YouTube Launches Free Audio Library With 150 Royalty-Free Tracks – YouTube currently offers more than 150,000 audio tracks on its site that video producers can use as background music for their videos. Those tracks, however, can’t be downloaded or remixed, which makes it hard to use them in creative ways. For users who want to do a bit more with their background music, however, YouTube today is expanding this library with a selection of 150 new royalty-tracks.

Ad-skipping is still legal, despite Fox’s best effort – Fox Broadcasting lawyers made an all-out push earlier this year to knock the newest version of Dish’s ad-skipping Hopper DVR off the market, but they have failed. A Los Angeles federal judge has weighed the competing briefs of both companies and decided the product can remain on the market while litigation proceeds, according to a Dish statement. The actual order remains under seal, so the legal reasoning remains opaque, for now. A redacted order will likely be published soon.

Security:

Popular iOS e-mail app acquired by Dropbox has serious bug, researcher warns – In a blog post published Wednesday, Michele Spagnuolo of Italy said that Mailbox for iOS will execute any JavaScript code embedded in the body of an HTML-formatted e-mail. A video shows how the bug can be exploited to open iOS apps without user prompting, simply by viewing a booby-trapped message. His post said the damage could be much more severe.

Data Broker Giants Hacked by ID Theft Service – An identity theft service that sells Social Security numbers, birth records, credit and background reports on millions of Americans has infiltrated computers at some of America’s largest consumer and business data aggregators. Two of the hacked servers were inside the networks of Atlanta, Ga.-based LexisNexis Inc., a company that according to Wikipedia maintains the world’s largest electronic database for legal and public-records related information. (suggested by Aseem S.)

The Sky is Not Falling–It’s Fallen – The security community didn’t invent the concept of fear, uncertainty and doubt, but it has perfected it and raised it to the level of religion. It’s the way that security products are marketed and sold, but it’s also the way that the intelligence community justifies its extra-legal and, in some cases, unconstitutional, data-gathering practices. Just as vendors use the specter of catastrophic hacks, data loss and public embarrassment to push their wares, the NSA and its allies have used the dark shadow of 9/11 and global terrorism to justify their increasingly aggressive practices, some of which have now been shown to have deliberately weakened some of the fundamental building blocks of security.

Company News:

Target Ticket video service launches to the public, offers digital downloads – Late last month, a tip surfaced claiming that Target would be opening its Target Ticket video service to the general public soon, taking it out the previously closed beta it was in. Fast forward a few weeks, and such has proved to be the case, with the new video service officially exiting beta and being available to all who want to try it out.

Cloud security alliance releases cloud controls matrix, version 3.0 – The CCM Version 3.0 expands its control domains to address changes in cloud security risks since the release of the CSA’s seminal guidance domain, “Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing version 3.0” while making strides towards closer harmonization of the two.

Valve To Launch A Prototype Steam Box/Multiple Steam Machines In 2014 – Following the announcement of SteamOS, Valve just unveiled the long-anticipated Steam Box — sort of. Instead of releasing a Valve-branded Steam Box, the company will actually work with multiple manufacturers to release a series of Steam machines for your living room. Yet, Valve also presented a specific prototype, a Steam machine designed by Valve.

EU says Google antitrust decision close – The European Commission’s antitrust chief says a decision on Google’s antitrust case is near — and warned that because the search giant’s share is larger in the EU, it will not follow its American counterpart’s earlier decision.

Microsoft is developing a games console just for China – There’s much more chance of success in China if you work with a Chinese company, and Microsoft has chosen to do exactly that for this new games console. A new company has been created called E-Home Entertainment Development that is only 49 percent owned by Microsoft. The other 51 percent is controlled by Chinese company BesTV New Media Co.

Google creates network for tech startups – Google announced today it is building a network for tech entrepreneurs in seven North American cities. The venture, dubbed Google for Entrepreneurs Tech Hub Network, is focused on connecting emerging local tech companies and leaders with each other, as well as with resources at Google. The company is partnering with tech hubs in Chicago, Denver; Detroit, Durham, N.C., Minneapolis, Nashville and Waterloo, Ontario.

Sony tweets new peeks at PlayStation 4 – Posted late Tuesday on Twitter by PlayStation Community Manager Chris Owen, the images reveal the deep-blue screens for the PS4 and its companion mobile app. One screenshot shows a video capture of a PS4 game in action, another displays a “Live Stream” screen, and a third takes a peek at the video-edit menu.

Off Topic (Sort of):

How Google could have made the Web secure — and failed – Google confirmed it made a change to better protect the privacy of how people search. However, it left loopholes in that protection and once again failed to seize an opportunity to encourage all sites to go secure.

EasyJet stopped customer from boarding plane due to criticism of airline on Twitter – If you’re wondering how an airline could’ve picked Leiser out of a crowd based on a tweet, our guess is they were simply monitoring EasyJet mentions, saw Leiser’s tweet, then searched for a photo of him — which would’ve only taken a few seconds in this day and age. It’s a story of he-said-airline-said, but it’s not too farfetched that an insulted manager would take frustration out on the source of that frustration.

Yeah, You Did: Man Uses Nipple to Unlock iPhone Instead of Fingerprint – Please witness a man awkwardly training his iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor using his own nipple for, oh, about a minute or so. He then unlocks his phone using his nippleprint (new word!). What happens when his friend tries to unlock the phone with an unknown nipple? It won’t unlock.

Study: Internet sales tax software will be costly to implement – As several U.S. lawmakers and retail groups renew their efforts to get Congress to approve an Internet sales tax, opponents countered Wednesday with a study saying sales tax collection software would cost medium-sized Web-based sellers $80,000 to $290,000 to set up and another $57,500 to $260,000 a year in fees, auditing expense and other costs.

Mayday! Mayday! Amazon’s On-Demand Support Could Be A Scaling Nightmare – What happens when it’s easier to call tech support than to Google your problem? Amazon might discover the costly answer to that question depending on how much the owners of its new Kindle Fire HDX tablets use its Mayday on-demand video customer support feature. And whether they behave themselves.

Something to think about:

“The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body.”

– John Adams

Today’s Free Downloads:

VLC media player 2.1.0 – VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. It doesn’t need any external codec or program to work.

Comodo Personal Firewall – Secure your system against internal attacks such as Trojan viruses / malicious software and external attacks by hackers. Comodo Personal Firewall is the powerful and effective, easy to manage barrier that keeps hackers out and personal information in. Comodo Personal Firewall helps you connect in a secure way to the internet and global networks.

Digital Home Server 2.1.3.0 – The Digital Home Server (DHS) is a FREE home automation and multimedia application which is easy to use, and aimed at non-technical users.DHS is actually a graphical framework with a number of applications. Some applications are small and can be dragged around the screen, others are full screen.

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Post-NSA Revelations, Most Users Feel Less Safe – Some 65 percent of consumers, SMBs, large enterprises, and government agencies in the survey say they feel less safe now knowing that the NSA has access to electronic and phone records, while 26 percent are ambivalent, 4.5 percent feel safer, and 4 percent aren’t aware of the NSA program. They consider government the biggest threat to their online privacy, followed by corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Apple, according to the survey of some 7,900 users conducted by private cloud backup and sharing provider SpiderOak.

Meet the machines that steal your phone’s data – From Arizona to California, Florida to Texas, state and federal authorities have been quietly investing millions of dollars acquiring clandestine mobile phone surveillance equipment in the past decade. Earlier this year, a covert tool called the “Stingray” that can gather data from hundreds of phones over targeted areas attracted international attention. Rights groups alleged that its use could be unlawful.

Lavabit shutdown case request for unsealing submitted, may shed light on hidden matters – In the beginning of August, Ladar Levison shut down his Lavabit email service without warning, citing the reasons as being related to the government and a requirement that would make him “complicit in crimes against the American people.” The case has been sealed and Levison is under gag order, greatly limiting any details he can provide on what went down. That may change soon, with Lavabit requesting a partial unsealing so that others can file amicus briefs.

Egnyte jumps on PRISM frenzy with its own ‘prevention’ program – The National Security Agency’s PRISM data mining program has stirred up hysteria with consumers and businesses alike, which ironically in itself could present a business opportuntity for tech security companies. Enterprise cloud service provider Egnyte is jumping on that interest with a new “PRISM prevention program,” promising to detect cloud file sharing services and content that are unapproved by the company’s IT department.

Miracast: Everything to know about mirroring Android – Acting like a wireless HDMI cable, Miracast mirrors your Android device onto your TV screen in high definition and with audio. Once Miracast is enabled, everything — from the general interface, to apps and videos — is duplicated on the big screen without the burden of a cable connecting the two devices. Its differentiating quality? It doesn’t rely on your home’s Wi-Fi network. But, it’s not magic — let’s lift the hood to see how Miracast works.

Firefox burns Chrome in our trustworthy browser poll – About a month ago I asked Naked Security readers: Which web browser do you trust? Your answer was emphatic: it’s Firefox, and it accrued almost twice the number of votes of its nearest rival, Google Chrome.

How to Sell Your Phone for the Most Money – So how do you know just what your old phone is worth? We checked all of the major options and priced out what we’d get by selling a 16GB iPhone 5 on AT&T in good working condition. But before we dive into where to sell, here are some general rules of thumb on what these buyers will — and won’t — pay for

Sold Android App Makes Selling Old Gear a Snap – Sold is a service that takes all the hassle out of selling your old gear by making quick cash offers on a variety of items. They’ll even send you a box for shipping. The new Android app has arrived to make it even easier to turn your old stuff into money.

Google fixes lengthy, widespread Gmail glitch – A Gmail glitch that took about 10 hours to fix and hit close to 50 percent of the webmail service’s users has been fixed, ending one of the longest, most widespread Gmail disruptions in years.

Wrangle your smart home devices with Staples Connect – The promise of a product like Staples Connect is that it eliminates that complexity by funneling those devices through a single, broadly compatible wireless hub and into a centralizing mobile control app. Instead of the user installing multiple hubs and adjusting device settings among four or five different apps, Staples Connect will consolidate everything into one app, and one hardware hub.

5 free compression tools zip your files just dandy – If you’re willing to fork over some cash, you can opt for a commercial compression application, such as WinZip or WinRAR. But each sells for about $30. Luckily, these paid applications aren’t your only options when it comes to compression tools. There are some fantastic free alternatives out there. Some are even open source.

The Best Antivirus for 2013 – Most antivirus vendors that run on a yearly update schedule wait until the fall to release the next year’s version, just like car manufacturers. So, the “2014 models” appear in the fall of 2013. As new versions arrive, most of the same products retain their positions at the top of the heap. Here are the best from the current crop of antivirus products.

iPhone users are falling for fake waterproof iOS 7 ad – You don’t have to be an expert in all things tech to use a smartphone, nor do you have to spend your days reading technology blogs. However, it’s probably important that people not act too rashly when they are casual users. For example, dunking your phone in water because you saw an ad claiming iOS 7 added waterproofing is certainly an ill-conceived course of action. But that’s just what some people are apparently doing.

Teen privacy “eviscerated” by planned Facebook changes – A coalition of US groups that advocate for teenagers is crying foul over proposed changes to Facebook policy that would rubber-stamp the use of teenagers’ names, images and personal information to endorse products in advertisements.

Company News:

Twitter to be listed on NYSE for IPO – Earlier this month Twitter submitted the paperwork required for its IPO to commence. One bit of information that we didn’t know at the time Twitter announced it had filed its S-1 with the SEC for its IPO was which stock exchange would be handling the IPO for twitter. We have now learned that Twitter will be listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

ManageEngine Optimizes Oracle Database Monitoring at Oracle OpenWorld 2013 – For Applications Manager users, the move improves tuning and troubleshooting of Oracle systems by enhancing real-time visibility into the health and performance of Oracle databases and their related applications. ManageEngine is demonstrating Applications Manager and its new Oracle database monitoring enhancements at Oracle OpenWorld, which continues through September 26 at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Apple updates iMac to Haswell processors – Apple has announced that it has updated its iMac lineup with the fourth generation Intel Core processors and latest Nvidia graphics cards along with a wide variety of storage options.

Here’s how SteamOS destroys Microsoft – This week the gaming-centric company known as Valve has announced plans to release SteamOS, a living room-aimed operating system that will be free to download and free to license. This operating system is based on Linux architecture – similar to how Android is a Linux-based OS – and the company intends on expanding well beyond the confines of their current video games-based model with TV, movies, and music. Is Microsoft too big to fail? We’re about to find out.

Games and Entertainment:

EA’s FIFA 14 Launches in North America – Just as planned, Electronic Arts on Thursday announced that FIFA 14 is now available in retail stores through North America and as a digital download on Origin.

Surface Pro 2 Is Another Missed PC Gaming Opportunity for Microsoft – Despite the power of the Surface Pro 2, gaming barely got a mention at Microsoft’s press conference–let alone any kind of unique hook for PC gamers. If Microsoft has any ambitions to attack Steam on its main turf (which happens to be Microsoft’s operating system), we didn’t get the slightest whiff.

Off Topic (Sort of):

How tech can make government more honest – A pilot program is underway in Jersey City, NJ to track employees’ use of city vehicles. As a New Jersey taxpayer I can only rejoice. Government ought to use tech more aggressively at all levels to fight waste and fraud.

This is an iPhone 5s getting shot by a .50 caliber rifle – Look, I have no idea what would compel someone to take a brand new electronic device and deliberately damage it. That dose comes courtesy of a Barrett Model 82A1 military rifle, which will run you about $9,000 and move a bullet up to 3,200 ft. per second, or about 975 meters per second.

NeoRouter Free 2.1.0.4265 – The NeoRouter Free application was designed to help you manage and connect to all your computers from anywhere. It gracefully integrates Remote Access, File Sharing, Virtual Private Network, User and Access Management.

iSpy 5.5.0.0 – iSpy uses your webcams and microphones to detect and record movement or sound and provides security, surveillance, monitoring and alerting services. Any media that is captured is compressed to flash video and made available, securely over the web. iSpy can be setup to run on multiple computers simultaneously. iSpy is free, open-source software, so if you want it to do anything else, please download the source code and customise it to your requirements.

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Cancel data sharing deal with US, EU politicians urge – European politicians on Tuesday demanded that a broad data-sharing agreement between the U.S. and the European Union be suspended, following allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency illegally tapped banking data.

Dropbox, LinkedIn Join Fight for Data Request Transparency – The file-sharing company today filed a legal brief with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), arguing that it should have the right to publish the number of national security-related requests it receives. The move comes shortly after LinkedIn did the same last week.

Former senators say Congress needs to rein in the NSA – The current process of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approving massive data collection requests from the NSA isn’t protecting privacy and civil liberties, said former Senators Walter Mondale and Gary Hart, both Democratic members of the so-called Church Committee that investigated intelligence abuses in the mid-1970s.

Senators Demand Answers On NSA Snooping — By The End Of 2014 – This almost sounds compelling: A bipartisan group of Senators demanding that the intelligence wing of the United States government take a hard look at itself and report its findings to the public. Of course, asking a consummate intelligence insider to vet his own team isn’t exactly exciting.

How much influence can the UN have over online spying? – While the UN General Assembly and other international bodies like the International Telecommunications Union theoretically have some influence on global Internet policy, the reality is that countries are already blocking whatever they want and spying on whomever they want, with hardly any consequences.

Search files in a flash with SwiftSearch – Check out SwiftSearch, a free, portable search utility that’s remarkably small and remarkably fast. With it you can find just about any file, on any drive, in about the time it takes to read this sentence. In fact, forget sentence; the time it takes to read this word!

Camgirls account for 20% of the entire porn business – It’s as anonymous as anonymous can be, and the internet lets you can access porn right when the mood strikes and shame hasn’t yet taken hold. Because of this, the internet sector of the porn industry is massive — and the porn industry with everything else is even bigger. That’s why it’s incredible that webcam porn — camgirls and boys and whatever else — account for 20% of the entire industry.

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 review: New features, easier to use, still free – Apache OpenOffice is a full suite of office applications: word processor, database, spreadsheet, presentation, and graphics. Each of them is full-featured and robust. Though not always matching Microsoft Office in terms of maximum bells and whistles, each application goes far beyond the basics in its class. Not bad for a free suite.

High-tech outdoor gear to help you fight (and win!) against Mother Nature – Many of us insist on venturing far from the safety and comfort of civilization to camp out in the great outdoors—for fun. If you are indeed foolish enough to try your lot out there, then please—please!—take a moment to read through this list of high-tech (and mostly affordable) outdoor gear designed to help you survive a direct confrontation with Mother Nature. Godspeed, nature lover.

Hands-on with Kidoodle.TV, a Netflix just for kids – A new contender has entered the ring, with a kids-only streaming service called Kidoodle.TV launching Monday as a free beta for those in the U.S. and Canada. After playing with it for a few days, I can say it shows some promise, and will be even more useful if it extends beyond the desktop with mobile and console apps. (Although free while in beta, the final service will cost $5 a month.)

Now even supermarket chains are making cheap Android tablets – Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket chain and the world’s second-most-profitable retailer behind Walmart, has announced it is launching an Android tablet. The device mostly runs stock Android 4.2.2 (including the Google Apps), but Tesco has added a small “T” to the left side of the system bar that will bring up an app for Tesco’s myriad services.

Up Close And Personal With Microsoft’s Surface 2 And Surface Pro 2 – Now that the dust from Microsoft’s Surface event has settled, we’re left with two new tablets and one grand vision for the holidays — with three Surfaces now on the market, Microsoft has carved out a seemingly strong position for itself as people began to plan for some big purchases.

The Peachy Printer is a $100 3D printer and scanner – The premiere consumer-level 3D printers from the likes of MakerBot cost around $2,000. A new project seeking crown funding on both Kickstarter and Indiegogo called the Peachy Printer promises to deliver a functional 3D printer for a fraction of that price — just $100.

Google begins barring browser plug-ins from Chrome – Reliant on plug-ins like Silverlight, Unity, and Java? Make plans to move on or change browsers, because most plug-ins will be banned from Chrome in the next year. Most Chrome plug-ins (not to be confused with the lighter-weight add-on option called extensions) use a technology that predate Google’s browser by years.

Security:

Secure your Facebook account – View your Facebook profile as the public and your friends see it, and then use Facebook’s global settings to restrict access to and use of your posts, photos, and other information.

New York Attorney General sets up sting operation to crackdown on fake online reviews – Fake and misleading reviews are everywhere online, and now New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will be announcing a crackdown on a number of groups engaged in illegitimate review practices. A report from the New York Times says that the Attorney General has come to terms with some 19 different companies, forcing them to pay fines to a tune of around $350,000 in total, on top of forcing them to stop the deceiving practices. (recommended by Aseem S.)

Lucky Kids: California Gives Minors the Right to Delete Things They Put Online – The Golden State becomes the first state to demand that children have an “eraser button” online. Coming as part of a bigger minor-focused bill that prohibits targeted online marketing of products like alcohol and firearms, the erasing provision states that any minor in the state of California be able “to remove … content or information posted on the operator’s Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application.”

Qualcomm former executive vice president charged in financial scheme – Qualcomm former executive vice president, Jing Wang, has been indicted by the U.S. government for obstruction of a federal investigation and for the use of insider information in a financial scheme for tax evasion and ill-gotten wealth. The former executive is no longer working at Qualcomm, reports Reuters, and was arrested earlier today by the FBI.

Nokia scores victory over HTC in patent lawsuit, seeks to block certain devices – When it comes to patents, it seems there is always one big tech company suing another, claiming violation and damages over the use of technology that is in some way infringing. One such recent lawsuit came from Nokia over rival HTC, which filed a patent suit against the company claiming some of its smartphones and tablets were infringing, something a preliminary ruling has agreed with.

Games and Entertainment:

Virtual Reality Gaming Gets Real with EVE: Valkyrie on Oculus Rift – For months now, I’ve been reading raves for Oculus Rift, the virtual-reality gaming headset that’s among the most famous Kickstarter projects. One of them came from my own colleague Lev Grossman. Like many folks, he got downright giddy after receiving a demo. On Friday, I finally tried the headset for myself. And even though my expectations were sky-high, it exceeded them. It really is spectacular.

GTA V is crashing Xbox 360s manufactured before 2009 – There’s growing frustration on the unofficial gtaforums.com from gamers who own Xbox 360 consoles manufactured between 2005 and 2009. These consoles typically shipped with 20GB or 60GB hard drives and were the most prone to the Red Ring of Death (RRoD) issue. GTA V isn’t causing any RRoDs as far as I can tell, but it isn’t playable for more than 30 minutes on certain machines.

Rockstar Investigating GTA 5’s Missing Vehicles Glitch – Stolen cars are an implicit part of the Grand Theft Auto gameplay, but disappearing vehicles seem to be an unintended consequence of new GTA 5 upgrades. Some players reported missing cars following an upgrade and a completed mission, saying that they found their virtual garage empty.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Oracle refuses to pay $33,540 strip club bill – Oracle is facing a lawsuit stemming from a $33k strip club bill that one of its employees racked up at last year’s OpenWorld conference and that the company is now refusing to pay.

Computer simulations suggest war drove the rise of civilizations – According to British historian Arnold Toynbee, “History is just one damned thing after another.” But Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut in Storrs questions this premise then tries to answer it in a new study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He and his colleagues show history may be deterministic to a certain extent. And their computer simulations show that warfare may have been the main driver behind the formation of empires, bureaucracies, and religions.

Part of Apollo 12 rocket engine returns after decades in deep space – This incredibly cool gif shows the remarkable path taken by debris from the Apollo mission as it approached Earth for the first time in 31 years. For 31 years this piece of debris circled the sun, but in the early 2000′s it wandered a little too close to the Earth and entered the planet’s Hill Sphere.

Google Constitute unveiled as site to explore the world’s constitutions – Google, with support coming from the Comparative Constitutions Project have announced Constitute. This newly launched site provides access to digitized copies of the world’s constitutions. And as a side effect, also makes these same constitutions browsable and searchable. In fact, it was shown that you will be able to narrow searches down to specific topics and even specific time periods.

Something to think about:

“If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can’t, you’re right.”

– Mary Kay Ash

Today’s Free Downloads:

Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit (formerly ExploitShield) 0.9.3 – Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit BETA, formerly ExploitShield, protects you from zero-day exploits targeting browser and application vulnerabilities. Its proprietary technology shields your browser and applications in that critical period between the release of a new exploit and its subsequent security patch. Easy to install and lightweight. Download Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit BETA now and crush the most dangerous breed of malware attack.

Wise Game Booster 1.2.3.33 – Wise Game Booster is a free game speedup tool. Users can use it to boost up games by improving PC performance. With one click optimization, users can easily do this even novices. For advanced users, it is possible to manually close processes and unnecessary Windows services, and also do other optimizations. Add the games into “my games”, and then you don’t need to find the game from crowded desktop icons.

NSA surveillance goes beyond Orwell’s imagination – ‘All sorts of people around the world are questioning what America is doing,’ Alan Rusbridger told an audience in New York. Speaking in the wake of a series of revelations in the Guardian about the extent of the National Security Agency’s surveillance operations, Rusbridger said: “Orwell could never have imagined anything as complete as this, this concept of scooping up everything all the time.

These 12 Bills Are the NSA’s Worst Nightmare – These pending bills seek to keep the NSA from sweeping up phone records en masse, take the rubber stamp away from the top-secret spy court that approves surveillance requests, and allow tech companies to tell the public more about the government requests they receive for user data, among other things. Here’s a guide to 12 pending bills that target US government spying (collected with help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation ).

Keep Calm, Keep Encrypting — With A Few Caveats – The NSA’s systematic crypto-cracking and other tactics have changed the data-protection game for enterprises. Encryption remains a key security tool despite newly leaked documents revealing the National Security Agency’s efforts to bend crypto and software to its will in order to ease its intelligence-gathering capabilities, expert say. But these latest NSA revelations serve as a chilling wake-up call for enterprises to rethink how they lock down their data.

Federal Cybersecurity Professionals To Leadership: We Can Do Better – MeriTalk, a public-private partnership focused on improving the outcomes of government IT, today announced the results of its new report, “FISMA Fallout: The State of the Union.” The report, underwritten by NetApp, examines the state of cyber security at Federal agencies and looks at whether the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) is hurting or helping agencies improve cyber security and protect data. According to the report, Federal cyber security professionals lack confidence in FISMA, and do not believe their agencies’ current cyber security solutions are sufficient and sustainable.

20 steps to a lean, clean machine – If your legacy laptop is showing signs of age, it could simply need some basic maintenance. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how to clean out your system.

How to get an extra 10GB of Google Drive space for free – Google gives all comers 15 gigabytes’ worth of free storage across Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Plus Photos. Not a bad chunk of space just for having a heartbeat. Of course, more is always better, especially when you don’t have to pay for it. And Google is now offering exactly that, though there are a couple small catches. From now through Sept. 26, you have the opportunity to score an extra 10GB of Google Drive space, no extra charge.

Introducing Apple’s New “Kids” App Store – Apple has finally take steps to better cater to the children who have adopted its devices, and especially family favorite the iPad, with the launch of a Kids App Store. Arriving this week alongside the launch of iOS 7, the Kids App Store store is not a separate mobile application, to be clear, but is rather a new section within the Apple App Store itself, which now features an added “Kids” category where apps are broken down by age range.

Watch Live TV On the Go With Verizon FiOS App – Balancing scheduled TV shows and a busy schedule can be a hassle, but Verizon FiOS now lets you bring live programming on the go. Mobile FiOS app users can now watch up to nine TV channels wherever and whenever, even away from home — including BBC America, BBC World News, EPIX, NFL Network (tablet only), Tennis Channel, Food Network, and Travel Channel — depending on their current FiOS TV package.

Building a better password: Simple changes add strength – Security threats have evolved beyond recognition, but our capacity to remember passwords has remained unchanged. We are still able to remember just two or three passwords, and most people choose relatively short and rather predictable passwords in order to be able to recall them. Password managers address this problem, but come with their own problems. What if malware breaks in and steals all the passwords?

5 launcher apps to give your Android phone a fresh new look – It’s a matter of taste, but the interface that your Android phone comes saddled with may not always be the most appealing, and that’s why there are myriad launcher apps available in the Google Play store. These apps customize the way the interface looks and operates, and even streamline animations as you pan between screens.

Security:

IE exploit covers all recent versions, hits most businesses – A zero day flaw in Internet Explorer (IE) that impacts all versions of the browser is being actively exploited in the wild, Microsoft reports. Exploits seem to have focused on IE versions 8 and 9, according to Microsoft. But researchers at Websense have discovered that nearly 70 percent of Windows business users are susceptible to this IE zero-day exploit.

Hackers Bypass Apple’s Touch ID With Lifted Fingerprint – If somebody is willing to go through all of this to break into your phone, chances are you have bigger issues than fingerprint security. Also, given that most iPhone users probably don’t even use a PIN code to secure their devices today, Touch ID still marks a massive step forward in smartphone security — even given the remote chance that somebody would lift your fingerprint and go through the trouble of bypassing it.

Security Snippets: Australian IT pros share their security stories – Earlier this month, ZDNet Australia held a panel discussion in Sydney, bringing five high-ranking IT officers together to talk about the most pertinent security issues facing their organisations. The ability to trust people in the organisation was identified as a significant issue for all, but each security guru had their own idea of what measures help them sleep at night.

Bike Thieves, Beware! – Britain’s Integrated Trackers puts a GPS tracker inside various bike parts where thieves may not expect—for example, under the top cap, inside the seat, or in the light. You “arm” the GPS when you walk away, just as you would lock your car. If your bike gets stolen, it sends an SMS to your phone and you can begin to track the movement of your bike for a fee through the service. It’s not quite anti-theft but it is certainly pro-recovery.

Stop webcam spies with free, 3D-printed “RAT TRAP” – The RAT TRAP, a small plastic rodent that clips over the top of a laptop screen and blocks the camera. Slide it to the side and the camera is usable again. If the RAT TRAP is less practical than a piece of tape—which can remain on when closing the laptop lid—it’s still a clever idea from a set of advertising creatives in the Boulder, Colo. area. Rather than sell the little critter, the group developed it as a digital file suitable for 3D printing and gives it away freely under a Creative Commons license.

Company News:

LinkedIn sued by users who say it hacked their e-mail accounts – Four plaintiffs filed a class-action suit in US district court in San Jose on Friday claiming that LinkedIn used its member’s identities without consent and broke into their third party e-mail accounts to send promotional e-mails to the members’ contact lists. The 46-page complaint details many instances in which users complained to LinkedIn about this practice, especially in instances where LinkedIn sent e-mails to “the addresses of spouses, clients, opposing counsel, etc.”

Valve expected to finally release details of its home console – Valve will make three—that’s right, three—announcements related to the Steam Box (if that’s indeed its name) next week, presumably on Monday when the site’s 72-hour countdown expires. Valve’s site also says “Soon, we’ll be adding you to our design process,” so it looks like beta hardware might come first before the actual console gets into people’s hands. But that’s just a guess.

Games and Entertainment:

Grand Theft Auto V rakes in over $1 billion in three days – In more billion-dollar news this Friday (this time with a happier bent), the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto V has crossed the $1 billion threshold after being on sale for just three days. On its first day on shelves, the fifth installment of the 16-year-old franchise made $800 million.

Off Topic (Sort of):

10 Things I Didn’t Know About Google – For this week’s TIME cover story on Google’s “moon shot” projects — including Calico, a new company that will research ways to extend human life. Much of what I learned made its way into the article. But I was also left with lots of interesting tidbits that didn’t get mentioned. Here are ten of them that I think are worth sharing.

Apple? They Make The Cheap Plastic Phones, Right? – Apple could learn a lot from the fall of Burberry. The once-exclusive fashion brand became associated with trashy youth by greedily licensing out its signature tan chequered pattern for use on baseball caps and other cheap clothes. Suddenly, the rich clientele it had catered to for a century wanted nothing to do with Burberry. Could Apple’s iPhone brand have the same trouble after selling the 5c?

You Win, Republicans. My GIF Reaction To Their GIF OpED – IFs are the hot new thing. News organization BuzzFeed.com, which has staked its future on dozens of GIF and listicle posts a day, now has a staggering 85 million unique visitors a month. Attention-starved politicians want in on the action. So last week, Republicans published out a GIF-filled attack article against Democratic opposition to an oil pipeline. It was an instant success; the post snagged headlines from a dozen tech and mainstream outlets. The Internet went bananas. Here’s a sample of what the Energy and Commerce Committee put out (full post here).

Something to think about:

“Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.

Wise Folder Hider 1.41.77 – Wise Folder Hider is a free file/folder hiding tool. User can use it to hide files and folders on local partitions or removable devices. The data can’t be accessed by other programs or on other operating systems such as DOS. The only way to access or unhide these data is to enter the valid password. However, this application is designed for home use only but not recommended for commercial settings which require stricter confidentiality.

SSuite – Dual View Portable 1.4 – This communication’s app is an ideal replacement for internet chat and video connections in companies, home networks, student campuses, or wherever it is needed. It is also able to create a private and secure peer-two-peer contact which will improve internal communications, business productivity, and relationships with friends and colleagues.

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

NSA seeks tighter ties to tech despite issues of data-sharing – The National Security Agency’s director of information assurance said the “way to achieve confidence in cyberspace” is to increase collaboration between the government and the high-tech industry—remarks that rang ironic given former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about how NSA works with industry.

Snowden docs now show Britain, not NSA, targeted Belgian telco – Citing documents provided by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Friday that it was actually the United Kingdom that was behind the recently disclosed malware infection at a major Belgian telco. Der Spiegel said that top secret documents from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA, show that “Operation Socialist” was designed “to enable better exploitation of Belgacom.”

The NSA Review Panel Is An Even Bigger Joke Than We Previously Thought – Today the AP reported that President Barack Obama’s promised NSA review panel is channeling the entity that it is supposed to inspect, hiding behind layers of government bureaucracy and obfuscating its work. The AP states that the review panel is lodged in offices provided by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Even more, the DNI is running its media strategy, vetting requests through its own press office. Any whiff of independence that the group might have hoped to engender is now certainly gone.

We don’t enable backdoors in our crypto products, RSA tells customers – RSA, the security firm that confirmed two of its products by default use a crucial cryptography component reportedly weakened by the National Security Agency, said such design choices are made independently. “RSA always acts in the best interest of its customers and under no circumstances does RSA design or enable any backdoors in our products,” the security division of EMC said in a brief statement published Friday. “Decisions about the features and functionality of RSA products are our own.”

The Top 30 Best Windows 8 Apps – Now with over 100,000 apps in the Windows Store, there are actually some good choices. Here are the top apps we think you should install on your Windows 8 PC.

5 Things You’ve Done That Are Probably Crimes – The United States—and the world—is plagued by dumb, stupid laws—so many in fact that there are two websites dedicated to the most ridiculous: Dumb Laws and Stupid Laws. But one area those sites don’t get into much is technology. Read on for five offenses you didn’t know were illegal and start prepping your defense should you need one. Maybe your case could change one of these dumb, redundant tech laws for the better.

Google makes Quickoffice free, throws in an extra 10GB of storage – Not to be overshadowed by Microsoft and Apple for their in-the-cloud document curation services, Google announced that Quickoffice is now free for iOS and Android users. The company also plans to bundle in 10GB of free storage for Google Drive for anyone who logs into their Google account from the app by September 26.

PC security, NSA-style: 7 tips from the spymasters – If you’re like most users, you take your privacy seriously. So we went right to the experts—the NSA itself—and pored over the agency’s security tips and recommendations for its Department of Defense and intelligence-community customers. From there, we identified seven measures that both consumers and small businesses can easily implement to protect themselves from hackers and cybercriminals—and perhaps even from the NSA. (An article which includes coverage on security issues often missed in “expert” articles.)

Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter – This won’t come as a surprise if you’re familiar with the game’s genre, but playing Starcraft 2 might make you smarter. Starcraft 2 is a so-called “real-time strategy game,” a form of video game that involves resource management and military planning in parallel, while restricting the amount of information that each player has.

Easy ways to protect your Android phone – Your Android phone not only enables you to do nearly everything online, but also allows you to carry your life in your pocket. Although having all that information in a single location and always on hand may be especially convenient, it makes for an appealing target to thieves and hackers. But you’re not defenseless: You can take a number of steps and precautions to ensure that your stuff stays safe.

The complete guide to iOS 7 (roundup) – After months of leaks, testing and teasing from Apple, iOS 7 is finally available for all to download. The new OS is a big change, packed full of new features to compliment the new look. We walk you through them.

Make Sure You Know Who Will Inherit Your Twitter Account – People draft estate plans that carefully detail how their money and property should pass to their heirs after they become incapacitated or die. But what about our so-called digital assets, such as an iTunes account containing thousands of songs, or a Twitter account with hundreds of followers? Can people pass those on as well? And how do they ensure that heirs get access to password-protected bank and trading accounts that exist only online?

Mobile app download tally will soar above 102B this year – Gartner on Thursday said the number of overall mobile app downloads — both free and paid — will soar to 102 billion by the end of this year, up from 64 billion in 2012. By 2017, the number of app downloads should reach nearly 269 billion. Mobile app revenues will be $26 billion in 2013, up from $18 billion last year, Gartner said. That $26 billion in revenues comes from paid downloads and in-app purchases — even though only 9% of all downloads this year cost money. The rest, 91%, are free.

$199, 4.2” computer is Intel’s first Raspberry Pi competitor – With the Raspberry Pi, Arduino Due, and BeagleBone, the world is full of cheap, tiny computers that can be used by creative developers in everything from robots to space flight. One thing these platforms have in common is an ARM processor. Now they have some competition from Intel with its “MinnowBoard,” a $199 computer in the form of a 4.2″ x 4.2″ board with an Intel Atom processor.

Security:

Hacking courses offer cybercrooks tips on how to hone skills – A growing number of experienced hackers have begun offering structured hacking courses for crooks seeking to make a career in cybercrime. The courses range from the basics of online fraud to advanced courses on online anonymity tools, botnets, cleaning up electronic evidence and dealing with law enforcement, according to RSA, the security division of EMC Corp.

Security Researchers Claim Apple Technically Capable Of Intercepting iMessages – Apple had previously claimed, via its security documents, that iMessages were encrypted end-to-end and that it is unable to read them. Researchers ‘GG’ and Cyril ‘Pod2G‘ Cattiaux of firm Quarkslab claim that they have discovered a method to perform a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, which can intercept these messages and allow them to be read, despite the encryption used by Apple.

Ubuntu Touch release set for October: Android Nexus devices up first – In a month from the time of the release of this article – that’s October 17th – the folks at Ubuntu will be releasing the newest desktop OS version 13.10, and along with it an image of Ubuntu Touch. This mobile software will be available “ready to install” on devices we’ve seen running early versions since January of 2013. This means the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets (2012 editions, at least), and the LG Nexus 4 will be ready to roll by Halloween with full smartphone-optimized Ubuntu.

GoDaddy buys domain marketplace Afternic – Domain name provider GoDaddy acquired domain marketplace Afternic from NameMedia in a move to make it easier for small business owners to buy domain names. The acquisition is GoDaddy’s fourth in the last 14 months. GoDaddy also will acquire domain parking service SmartName and business name generator NameFind from NameMedia, it said Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ubisoft’s Child of Light might be the next great RPG – Amidst a flurry of first person shooters, racing games, and yet another Assasin’s Creed, Ubisoft has managed to schedule a few really interesting titles for the coming year. If you haven’t been drawn in by the hacker action of Watch Dogs, it looks like the upcoming Child of Light might be the RPG you’ve been looking for in the next generation of games.

Race the Sun – Grand Theft Auto V—too good for the PC, by Rockstar’s reckoning—thinks it has a monopoly on driving really fast while fleeing for your life. Well, their 800 million dollar (!) magnum opus might be the bee’s knees, but indie-darling Race the Sun is an utterly fantastic take on the endless runner that’ll only set you back $10. And it’s available on PC, Mac, and Linux; take that, smug console gamers.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Hungry? Let’s print lunch – Companies are beginning to use 3D printers to make cakes, candies and even chocolate. At the same time, food labs are working on printing entire meals that would be customized to each person’s metabolism.

10 glorious examples of conspicuous PC excess – When it comes to sheer technological audacity, nothing beats a desktop. From face-meltingly fast hardware to ridonkulous workstations to massive CPU coolers that could blend into an art installation, the following examples of glorious excess are possible only with a PC.

Today’s Free Downloads:

Right Click Enhancer 4.1.2 – Right Click Enhancer gives you power to control the ultimate right click menu everyone use every day.Right Click Enhancer allows yo to edit your right click menu in the way you want. Now with help of this wonderful tool you can add some good stuff to your right click context menu.

SlimDrivers 2.2.32534 – SlimDrivers uses crowd-sourcing to spider and aggregate millions of devices. Using our cloud-based system, SlimDrivers not only detects when a driver needs updating, but also identifies the proper executable for your system and initiates the driver install automatically.

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Tech group asks 21 countries to disclose surveillance requests – Countries that have pledged to support Internet freedom should allow technology vendors to report the number of electronic surveillance requests they receive, a tech advocacy group said Thursday. The governments include those of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Ireland. As part of the coalition, they have committed to work together to advance Internet freedom.

Justice Dept. watchdog never probed judges’ NSA concerns – The Justice Department’s internal ethics watchdog says it never investigated repeated complaints by federal judges that the government had misled them about the NSA’s secret surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and Internet communications. Two judges on the court that oversees the spying programs separately rebuked federal officials in top-secret court orders for misrepresenting how the NSA was harvesting and analyzing communication records. In a sharply worded 2009 order, one of the judges, Reggie Walton, went so far as to suggest that he could hold national security officials in contempt or refer their conduct to outside investigators.

The Outrageous NSA Opinion – The secret surveillence court has weighed in on the NSA—but its decision, unfortunately, is more political than legal, writes Pentagon Papers lawyer James C. Goodale.

RSA Security advises users to avoid encryption possibly containing NSA backdoor – Word surfaced not too long ago that the NSA could have a backdoor for a specific type of encryption algorithm popularly used by developers. Today RSA Security, which offers this encryption to its customers by default in a toolkit, has sent out a notification advising those users to stop using it for the time being, as well as instructions for different options.

NSA Sends Letter to Its ‘Extended’ Family to Reassure Them That They Will ‘Weather’ This ‘Storm’ – The National Security Agency sent out a letter to all of its employees and affiliates, including contractors, that could be printed and shared with family, friends and colleagues. It was intended to reassure them that the NSA is not really the abusive and unchecked spying agency engaged in illegal activity that someone reading former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosures might think it happens to be.

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